The wind shifted before the city did. Gotham's breath turned sharp, cutting, the kind of cold that didn't belong this far south. It wasn't weather—it was weight.
Oblivion felt it before the first crack in the pavement. A pull in the air, a vibration in the bones of the world. He didn't call it anything. Didn't need to. He simply followed it, boots silent as he moved down an empty street.
The asphalt split. Frost bled through the gap, curling upward like a living thing. Then the ground tore open.
The Frostbearer rose.
A figure of giant ice and half-formed flesh, its body carved with runes that glowed faintly blue. Every breath fogged the air into frozen mist, creeping across the street until metal shrieked and glass shattered.
Oblivion's eyes lingered on it, sharp, unreadable. He had seen things like this before—not this exact form, but echoes. Frost giants from forgotten planes, elemental remnants that carried the hunger of winter itself. Always hungry. Always patient.
Not a demon, he thought, gaze narrowing. Something older. A fragment tied to seasons, to endings.
It didn't matter. His blades would cut it the same.
The Justice League arrived in light and force. Superman landed hard enough to break the ice beneath his boots, Wonder Woman close at his side, Lantern's emerald glow trailing overhead. Flash flickered in and out of sight, circling.
The Frostbearer's voice cracked through the air like a glacier breaking. "The world grows weak. I will return it to silence."
Oblivion stood at the edge of the chaos, still and silent. Wonder Woman's eyes caught him, narrowed faintly. She remembered his presence from older whispers, from records her island never burned. She said nothing.
Superman moved first, driving into the Frostbearer's chest with a strike that would've leveled steel. Ice cracked, but the giant didn't falter. Its arm swept back, and Superman vanished into a building's wall in an explosion of dust and frost.
Lantern's constructs wrapped chains around its torso. They shattered like brittle glass. Flash darted in with strikes at its joints, but the ice reformed faster than he could break it.
Oblivion's hands rested on his blades. He studied the glow of the runes, the way the frost grew, how it fed on sound and motion. Runic anchors, he thought. It doesn't just live—it binds itself into the world.
The Frostbearer's gaze dropped to him. Runes flared brighter. "The ghost. Even the frozen lands remember you."
The League hesitated, thrown by the recognition.
Oblivion didn't blink. His voice was steady, flat. "If memory brings fear, hold onto it."
He drew both blades. Their steel shimmered faintly, threads of magic pulsing along the edges.
The Frostbearer roared. Frost spines erupted from the ground, tearing through the street. Oblivion moved between them, each step deliberate, each slash precise—one spine shattering, another cut clean before it rose. His blades moved as if they'd cut this kind of creature before, his strikes aimed where the runes pulsed brightest.
The League moved around him. Superman ripped a frozen slab from the giant's arm. Wonder Woman's shield rang with the impact of a strike that would've killed mortals. Lantern blocked falling ice with a dome of light.
But Oblivion was the one the Frostbearer watched.
Its chest cracked open, not with blood but with mist. Shadows swirled inside, forming claws, wings, heads with too many eyes.
Summoning, Oblivion noted silently. Not servants. Fragments of itself. Feeding the world with its own hunger.
The first of the creatures spilled free, shrieking, limbs tearing through the air. Superman braced. Lantern raised his hand.
Oblivion simply adjusted his grip on the blades.
"This is only the beginning," he said, voice quiet, more observation than warning.
And the night split open into war.